Fed: Privacy fears over phone-tap laws

AAP General News (Australia)
02-15-2006
Fed: Privacy fears over phone-tap laws

By Saffron Howden

CANBERRA, Feb 15 AAP - Civil libertarians are alarmed at plans to give police powers
to phone-tap innocent people and trace their emails and text messages.

The federal government will tomorrow introduce new laws into parliament designed to
hand police the right to trace innocent third parties they think might be able to lead
them to a suspect.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock insists enough safeguards are built into the proposals
to protect the privacy of the innocent, but civil liberties groups are not so sure.

"This particular proposal means that people who aren't suspected of a crime - that's
innocent people - are going to weather this," Australian Council for Civil Liberties president
Terry O'Gorman said.

His NSW counterpart, Cameron Murphy, said Australia already had the highest phone-tapping
rate in the world, out-stripping the United States.

The proposed laws allow police and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO)
agents to tap phone calls and trace e-mails and text messages of people believed to be
in contact with suspected criminals.

Police will be able to have a tap in place for up to 45 days and ASIO will have three months.

Mr Ruddock says the powers will be subject to strict controls, including judicial oversight.

Police will have to prove they have exhausted all other avenues of investigation and
the crime they are investigating will have to carry at least a seven-year jail sentence.

"The issuing authority - that is, the judge - has to be satisfied in relation to a
number of other matters - that is, the privacy of a person won't be unduly interfered
with," Mr Ruddock told ABC radio.

"(The judge) has to take into account the seriousness of the offences being investigated,
how much of the information would be likely to assist in the investigation by the agency,
to what extent alternative methods of investigating it have been used, and how much use
of such methods would be likely to assist the investigation by the agency of the offence,"

he said.

"So you can see these are very significant tests that have to be satisfied."

But Mr O'Gorman said police were known to go "judge shopping".

"Law enforcers go judge shopping. They go to the ... judges who more readily give warrants
and are less questioning than others."

He also said a large range of offences carry a minimum seven-year sentence, including
in some cases tax evasion, extortion, bribery, arms trading, some sex crimes and immigration
offences.

Mr Murphy, president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, said he did not think
safeguards built into the proposed legislation were enough.

"We've seen ... already that Australian phones are 26 times more likely to be bugged
than an American phone," he told ABC radio.

"There's much more phone-tapping in Australia than in any other nation on earth and
judicial oversight has done nothing to stem that."

The Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill also will make permanent existing
powers to tap suspects' phones and monitor their emails and text messages.

The bill is a response to a report by former head of the Attorney-General's Department
Tony Blunn, handed down in September last year.

Mr Blunn found that, although phone tapping was essential to fighting crime and protecting
national security, there should be tighter laws to protect privacy.

The Australian Greens and the Australian Democrats have vowed to oppose the bill.

AAP shh/sb/it/bwl

KEYWORD: TAPPING NIGHTLEAD

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